Professor Ottoline Leyser: I should say that our understanding at the Royal Society is that the clear intention of the Bill is to implement the recommendations of the Nurse review and those recommendations have been broadly welcomed by the community for a variety of reasons. In terms of variable geometry, on the one hand, people have expressed concerns about, for example, ensuring a robust implementation of the Haldane principle so that money winds up in particular pots of money that are under the power of the individual research councils to spend; but at the same time, there is wide recognition that the ability of those research councils to collaborate at present and the ability to consider the research base across the piece is currently compromised by the way in which the divisions between the research councils are so hard. Therefore, the variable geometry is to be welcomed, as long as it does not simultaneously destroy the strength of our research base that has grown up through the Haldane principle and the power of individual research councils to allocate money independently.
From our point of view, the key question is the extent to which that opportunity for flexibility while maintaining our strong research base is enshrined in the Bill. We do not have huge concerns about that. There are particular  phrases that we have submitted in our concerns that touch on those questions, but overall we think that the direction of travel is absolutely right.

Valerie Vaz: Q  It is good to see you Minister. Presumably the Secretary of States didn’t think that this was an important meeting, so they sent you along, but this is within your expertise, isn’t it?

Valerie Vaz: Apart from you—you are the only one who is left. Everybody else has changed. Given that we now have two Secretary of States and machinery of  government changes, that we had an important vote on 23 June, and that, as you have heard, there are 150 amendments, is this not a good time to pause the Bill?